


Roses and Turpentine

by Ruis



Category: The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 13:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19230313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/pseuds/Ruis
Summary: „Remind me again why I am sitting here“, he murmured, shaking his head slightly. “Can’t you just, you know, take a photo?”Dorian, Basil and art. Modern AU.





	Roses and Turpentine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolfram_Hart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfram_Hart/gifts).



„Remind me again why I am sitting here“, he murmured, shaking his head slightly. “Can’t you just, you know, take a photo?” He had been ignored by his friend entirely for the last hour, so instead he’d been absorbed in a music book, occasionally tapping incomprehensible rhythms on the armrest of his chair, a counterpoint to the quiet scratch of brush on canvas. The air smelled of roses and turpentine, and Dorian was growing bored. His voice grew louder and more animated. “It’s not as if I need a life sized portrait of myself, so if you are not going to use this as part of your graduation project anyway, I don’t see why…”

“Hm?” Until now, a hypothetical observer standing in the doorway, observing the scene, might not even have noticed the second young man in the room. Basil had been working quietly, concentrating on his work. Even when he looked up, he seemed to blend in with the background, with his easel, with the canvas on which he was painting something not immediately visible from the entrance. “As I told you before, it’s personal. A photo can change, be filtered, be blurred. This will not.” 

Dorian shrugged. “Suit yourself”, he said. “I don’t have to understand it. There’s nothing wrong with those landscapes, of course. I like them. Love them, even. But really, if you absolutely have to work now, on a summer day like this, you should be working on something for your grade, not… this." While he was speaking, the movement of the paintbrush with its hypnotizing sound slightly slowed but never stopped, and Dorian had the unsettling feeling Basil was not even really looking at him in that moment, was just seeing him as another object of art. He frowned. “I told you. I don’t want that picture anyway. So why are you still painting? Art for the sake of art? Now this guy here”, Dorian exclaimed, waving his music book in the air, “has some extraordinary ideas about art as well.” 

Basil had to squint to recognize the writing on the title. He sighed when he read the name Stockhausen. That at least explained why earlier he had not been able to decipher the notation in that book, squiggles and sharp lines and colored dots instead of the music notes he was used to – not that he was an expert on those, of course. “So that’s what you are working on now?”, he asked instead of answering. “No matter what I think of that noise people insist on calling music, I really don’t think I can agree with him on the matter of art. Let me guess – Henry suggested this as the topic of your thesis? He really is a bad influence on you. You should have stuck to Schumann, I would have been happy to lend you the sheets. But anyway, you sat perfectly still today, and I’m almost finished with the painting. Do you want to look?”

Laughing, Dorian got up and walked over to the canvas. An invisible observer might have noticed Basil’s blush when Dorian put his hand on Basil’s shoulder, might have heard Dorian’s sharp intake of breath when he looked at the picture – but certainly, they’d clearly observe the contrast between those two, would have judged Dorian extraordinarily handsome, beautiful even, and Basil perfectly ordinary if not actually plain. Still, Basil looked quite content while Dorian contemplated the canvas.

Motionless, Dorian stood there, quiet for a longer time than Basil was used to from his friend. When he finally spoke, it was unexpected. “I hate it”, he said. He was not thinking of how his words might hurt Basil. Rather, for the first time, he became aware of something all the world’s photo filters had been able to hide from him, that he looked like this, right now, on this day of June, and would never be quite the same. Already, he was ten minutes older than the face looking back at him from the canvas. He remembered something Henry had told him in seminar the other day, of youth and only living once while the flowers outside the atelier would bloom again next summer… And it only hit home right then. It was inacceptable and horrified him profusely. “Is that really what I look like to you?”

When he answered, Basil did not look at him at all. “I’ve often enough told you how beautiful you are. You never seemed to mind.” He swallowed. “You can’t mean to tell me this picture doesn’t look good. I know it does. It might be my best work so far, and you think it’s bad?” Again, there was silence, this time not even broken by brushstrokes, until quietly, bitterly, Dorian started to laugh.

“Oh, it’s beautiful, all right. I love it, and maybe it’s even a part of myself you’re showing. Or rather yourself? Isn’t that the problem? Hasn’t that always been your problem, Basil? You see something beautiful and you love it. All the paintings and sculptures and installations, so what am I to you? Another beautiful thing? Sometimes I believe you would prefer me as something in a museum, a beautiful and cold and dead thing. Would you love me then? If I were like this picture, timeless and forever beautiful? Oh, now I know why you’re handing in those landscapes. You’re a great painter, but you are a coward, Basil, and maybe you always were.”

Sighing, Basil began to rummage around until finally, between his pencils and brushes and paint tubes, he found what he’d been looking for: his palette knife, the one he usually just used for backgrounds because it was not suited to detailed and delicate work. “A coward, you say?” And with that, unhesitating, he slashed the canvas. “Here. I would not want a mere painting, a bit of canvas and paint, to come between us, so… It’s yours now. You can frame it if you want. Maybe it’s even better than before like this, according to your standards.” Almost relieved, Dorian grinned at Basil. “You’re right”, he said. “It’s art now, when it wasn’t before. Wouldn’t have thought you a Stockhausen fan, though.”


End file.
